Since I go to London often, this opened up a section of London to me which I know, but not quite in the way Monica Ali reveals, to the reader, in her novel. What it must be like to be "sold" essentially to the highest bidder and be forced to live a life you have not chosen is what makes this book so compelling. You truly get the feeling of Nazeem's displacement when she is tranported to a foreign city (London) where everything is alien. Throughout the book, we see her struggle to assimilate into her community in London and make the best life she can without making too many waves. I felt like I was watching a film as I read this book. The characters truly leap off the page and we are brought into a culture that feels archaic but still exists in the world today.
My book club had a very lively and interesting discussion with this book. I would absolutely recommend it.

The book had the potential to being really great but the suspense is never built to a point where you feel frightened for the main character or feel any deep empathy for him. Too much discussion about maneuvers of the German army and too little forward movement of the story. I didn't find Furst's writing too compelling or with any great literary merit but some of his descriptions were interesting. Anytime a scene begins to get interesting he ends it as if it were a cliffhanger but doesn't follow through later to suggest what might have occurred or where he intended to go with that particular thread.